


Running

by zephyrprince



Category: X-Factor (Comics), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Brothers, New York, US Source
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-30
Updated: 2011-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephyrprince/pseuds/zephyrprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex deals with a startling revaluation about his irritating new classmate, Scott.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running

The two drawstrings hanging down on either side of Alex’s hooded sweatshirt bounced as his chest heaved in and out with the heavy breath that propelled him at the pace of his run. Despite having cut the grey sleeves off the garment to accommodate his massive muscular arms, the corners swayed in the uncomfortably on his shoulders as he moved through the Westchester woods surrounding Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

Alex stopped, leaning down, panting and gripping his knees with his hands to steady himself as he tried to catch his breath. As he leaned back up, he unzipped his hoodie, revealing his defined upper torso just inside. He reached an arm out to balance on a tree and pulled his leg back with the other to stretch his quads.

Alex was had been jogging this trail four or five times a week since he first arrived at the school two years ago. Of course the mansion, the X-Mansion as the kids had affectionately named it, had all the latest exercise equipment – top of the line, best that money could buy, just like everything with old Charlie. But Alex had never taken to it like he did these runs. After spending so long in solitary confinement, the constant interaction of boarding school life could be a bit much at times.

On this particular occasion though, he knew what was driving him to push his body to and beyond its limits.

Scott had arrived about a year and a half ago now. The only thing the existing students were told was that Xavier had found him using Cerebro in an adolescent orphanage facility run by a mutant in hiding. Alex didn’t think much of it except casually noting his own experience with the foster system. The casual disinterest had quickly worn off, however, as Scott quickly became the school’s rising star, rapidly honing his mutant ability to shoot lasers from his eyes, earning the confidence of the professor, and, infuriatingly, beginning to boss everyone else around.

He was a handful of years older than the rest of them, but, regardless, it was irritating, and perhaps the worst part was that no one seemed to agree with Alex. Sean especially fawned over him constantly and the new girl, Jean, who arrived soon after Scott did.

And if he was being honest, it wasn’t surprising that Scott was well liked, and he too hungered for the older boy’s approval somewhere in the back of his mind. But for some reason, he’d never gotten the same warm albeit patronizing reception from him that everyone else seemed to warrant. It activated every feeling of inadequacy, of social confusion that Alex had ever harbored. And he didn’t know why this one guy was such a lightning rod for that messed up stuff.

Alex reached behind his torso clasping his hands together behind him to stretch the muscles in his arms. He tried to regain his composure, though between physically wearing himself out and remembering the timeline on the events in question, he couldn’t totally calm down.

What had happened next was when it had started to go downhill.

The prof had started taking more and more of their blood and he and Hank would spend long hours in the mansion’s laboratories staring into microscopes and playing with the samples they’d taken in ways that Alex couldn’t even begin to understand or care about even if the two of them had cared to share.

Then abruptly one day, he’d been called into the professor’s private study. He was nervous going in because he was sure it was about the intra-team tension between him and Scott. He hadn’t hidden his dislike well enough, he’d caused discord in the group and now he was going to be reprimanded. Sweat began to bead up on his brow as he lifted his fist to knock on the heavy oaken double doors.

“Come in, Alex.”

He was surprised as he crossed the threshold into the bookshelf-lined room that Scott was already sitting across the desk from Professor Xavier and looking distinctly uncomfortable. This only fueled Alex’s anxiety further and his cheeks flushed as he willed himself to continue moving towards the chair next to Scott’s.

“Alex, I have something to tell you. It’s strange but ultimately we can only treat it as good news.”

That’s when the penny dropped, when the professor had revealed that his and Hank’s experiments, though in the very earliest stages of playing with genetic markers and despite being years ahead of other research facilities around the country still had limitations. In spite of all, they’d come up with some shocking results. They’d realized that Alex and Scott were brothers. . .

Alex couldn’t say anything. Anything at all. If there was anything in the world he had not expected to be confronted with that day in that moment, it was the existence of a brother, a brother he already knew and already hated.

Scott tried to be diplomatic. He reached out to put a hand on Alex’s shoulder but Alex cringed back from it. He looked at the professor and then he looked at Scott just for a second, and said, “Ok, interesting to know. Thanks for filling me.” And with that he bolted from the room.

At this point Alex felt comfortable to continue jogging. He hopped around in place a bit and then took off down the trail, trying to regulate his pace better this time. This line of thought though had led him down a path that ended the preceding Monday, and he found that he couldn’t restrain his thoughts from venturing there as he careened faster and faster against his will through the wooded terrain.

It was that day that Scott had broken. Alex had been avoiding any unnecessary contact with him for months. If Scott turned up in the yard where the boys were tossing a ball around, he’d very simply to the room he shared with Sean. He avoided the den where Scott spent his downtime, and he refused to make eye contact even when they had lessons together.

And to Alex’s credit, Scott had made no actual additional attempts to reach out to him since he’d cowered away from his hand that day. But on this particular day, when Alex had made a sandwich and sat down to eat in the dining room, when Scott entered and sat down with a salad next to him, when Alex got up to go, something must have snapped inside Scott.

“Fine. Leave. Again.”

Alex stopped for a second and looked Scott in the face for the first time in a long time. The older boy quivered with anger.

“You know what you are, Alex, a little wimp who’s too ashamed you’re secretly in love with your own brother to even sit in the same room with him.”

Alex’s mouth fell open, and a torrent of feelings surged through him all at once. Even remembering that moment now made the energy of his mutant abilities prickle up at the edge of his skin as anger burst forth inside him.

Suddenly out of the right side of his peripheral vision, Alex sensed movement – a rustle of leaves and then something moving into his direct path, he slowed himself as much as he could but when the movement flew out of the brush just in front of him, he could feel it happening again.

His mutant abilities engaged, yellow energy spiraling off him in a ring over his right shoulder and then moving swift and automatically out from in front of him.

One moment the deer was there and the next it coated Alex’s skin, the trees around them, and the ground below where it had stood. The creature had been bodily destroyed, but not in such a way that left a carcass, just the thing patina of pureed blood and flesh covering everything around them.

Just then Alex heard a twig break behind him, and wheeling around he faced a strange woman he’d never seen before. His powers bubbled up inside him but the shock of having just slain the deer helped him to push the autonomic urge back down.

“Very impressive, Alex.”

“Who are you?”

“It’s alright, Alex.”

The boy was stunned to hear his own named used by a complete stranger and though he maintained his fight or flight posturing, he did not move away.

The woman smiled, “Good instincts. You can trust me.”

When Alex said nothing in response, she continued.

“My name is Valerie Cooper. I work at the Pentagon, and I’d like to talk to you about our a new project idea. We call it X-Factor.”

A way out.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for eva_roisin as part of the xmmficathon working from the following prompt: "An Alex Summers character study. I'd like to see a fic that focuses on what he does after XMFC--growing up, leaving the X-Men (perhaps), or working for Charles in a different capacity. Any pairing or gen is okay."


End file.
